November 17, 2019

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Proper 29                                                                                                              

Isaiah 65:17-25

Canticle 9

2 Thessalonians 3:6-13

Luke 21:5-19

The Rev. Bradley Varnell

 

May only your word be preached, and may only your word be heard. Amen.

In our reading from Isaiah today the prophet reports the words of God to the people of Israel, newly returned from Babylonian exile. Israelites have come back to their homeland, but things are not like they were. Jerusalem and its temple have been destroyed. The people are back – but they have come back to a society in tatters, land devastated, cities and temples torn down.

God promised to bring Israel back to the land God had given them, but he is not finished. God has brought them back, but he has not brought them back to give them the glory of what was, he has brought them back to give them the hope of what will be. “I am about to create new heavens and a new earth,” says God, “the former things” the exile, the destruction of the temple, the destruction of Jerusalem, the suffering of the people “shall not be remembered or come to mind.” God promises a future where “no more shall the sound of weeping be heard” in Jerusalem, “or the cry of distress.” This future will be filled infants and the elderly who will live out full lives, “one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth,” and “one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed.”  The people “shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity.” God promises a future where all of creation – man and woman, adult and child, lion and wolf and lamb and ox will live fully and freely to be all that God has created them to be. The threat of life cut short – by death or exile or illness or suffering is done away with. In the midst of a shattered present, God speaks words of a future brimming with life.

I was thankful to have these words this week. As I sat down to write this sermon on Thursday, the first reports of the shooting in Santa Clarita, California were rolling in. It’s the fifth news-worthy mass shooting in the US since I came to St. Andrew’s just shy of four months ago. Hearing the story of another shooting brought home the reality that we, like the Israelites, live in a shattered world. We are living in a world that is sick, a world that is broken, a world that isn’t ok. A world where kids can get shot at school, a world where someone, a child, can be filled with so much hurt, so much anger, so much grief that he sees violence against others as his only option is not a world that’s alright.

God’s words come to us just as they come to the people of Israel. God promises us what he promised Israel: a world where the former things – the shootings, the bombings, the terrorist attacks, the natural disasters. Where the bullying, and the broken homes, and the abuse, and the suffering of life shall not be remembered or come to mind, a world where life will not be cut short, and where even the most natural of enemies – wolves and lambs – will come together. God promises us a world where “they shall not hurt or destroy.”

This world, a world where wolves and lambs lie down together, where weeping and distress are done away with, is the world that Jesus has brought into being. What was promised in Isaiah has come about in Jesus Christ. The crucifixion of Jesus is the testament to the nature of our world. When confronted by Jesus, by the love of God in human form, humanity decided to kill him. In the cross we see most fully and most completely how broken our world is. But the cross is not the end of the story: Christ is resurrected. In Christ’s resurrection the promise of a future beyond weeping and distress, beyond suffering is made concrete. Christ is our sure and certain evidence that God will not leave the world as it is. The Resurrected Lord is a testament that the shards of our world will be gathered up and knit together.

There is an obvious issue, though. There is still distress. There is still weeping. If I put a wolf in a pin with a lamb, good chances someone’s getting lamb chops for dinner. Christians live with a tension: on the one hand, we proclaim that in Christ the new world has dawned, that God’s future is made present. On the other hand, we also proclaim that this new world, that God’s future is not fully realized. Already and not yet. We might think of our predicament in theatrical terms. The first coming of Christ, his death and his resurrection is like the release of the first trailer for a long-awaited movie. It’s proof that the movie has been made and it builds anticipation of what will come, while not being the fullness of what is promised. The second coming of Christ, the full realization of God’s promised future in our world is the premiere. It’s the moment we’re all waiting for.

About that day and hour, as Scripture says, nobody knows.  We don’t know when Christ will return and when the future heaven and earth will be fully revealed. The premiere date is to be determined. So, we wait. But our waiting isn’t passive. We gather together each week, citizens of a world where death seems to reign, where weeping and distress are more common than we would like to admit or acknowledge, and we remember that this is not all there is. We remember that there is hope. That there is a promise. We remember what has happened in Jesus Christ. We remember that he has made us participants in his resurrection through baptism, we remember that Jesus shares his life with us every week through Holy Communion. We remember, and we tell the story, over and over again, of a God who loves our broken world and has set out to mend it, the story of a God who has become human, who has suffered as a human, who has died as a human, and who was raised to new life, a promise to all of us that God’s future will triumph even in the face of death.

Remembering and telling may not seem like a lot – but I think in a world filled with story after story of death and suffering, remembering and telling a story of life beyond death, life that overcomes death, life that cannot be contained by death is a radical, powerful act. Remembering and telling prevent us from succumbing to the narrative that this is just how it is and how it has to be. Remembering and telling kindles in us the ability to hope when hope is gone, when hoping seems stupid. Remembering and telling fires our spirits to imagine a world different, radically different, from the world as we know it now.

As we come to the table today, in the shadow of another tragedy, as we live with more proof that our world is not as it should be, come with hope: hope that God’s promises are sure, that God will not forsake us, that the God who has come once before will come once again, hope for the day when a new heaven and a new earth are made real, hope for a time when all we will know is the unsurpassable joy of the Kingdom of God. Come with hope, and then leave as messengers of hope for a shattered world, messengers that God has a future.

In the name of the One God who is Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

 

October 20, 2019

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Pentecost – Proper 24

Jeremiah 31: 27-34; Psalm 119: 97-104; 2 Timothy 3: 14 – 4:5; Luke 18: 1-8

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

 

Let us pray.  May only your word be preached, O God, may only your words be heard.  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  AMEN.

            Other than the heat, the swarms of gnats and wasps, it was a lovely place.  I am describing a part of Big Bend National Park out in West Texas, where I spent part of last week on retreat with some other clergy friends of mine.  After a day of hiking in the West Texas desert, when it was time to set up camp, and enjoy a beautiful sunset, that’s when all those gnats and wasps arrived.

            The gnats were an annoyance, but the wasps were a bit scary, particularly because one of my colleagues was allergic to wasps.  So allergic, in fact, he brought an epi pen with him in case he was stung and went into anaphylactic shock.  He did not volunteer this important information until there were about four wasps on his arms and some swarming around his legs, so his timing wasn’t great.  And neither was his packing, as he said the epi pen which he brought just might have expired.  It was when he began explaining to me how to send an “SOS” message on his portable GPS that I started to have reservations about this trip.

            But, the sun set, and with its setting, the gnats and the wasps eventually found their way elsewhere.  The cool desert breeze returned, and the soft moon and gentle stars appeared in the deep blue sky.  We were fine.  Recalling that experience last week leads me to these words we hear in 2 Timothy this morning, where the author compels young Timothy, to be “persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable.”

            On my trip last week, I wore a bracelet, made of pipe cleaner and a few beads with letters on them which spell out the word “hope.”  I made it in Rhythms of Grace as one of our activities during that service, and I have worn it for several weeks as a reminder to carry hope with me no matter where I am.  No matter if the present moment is a favorable one, like right now, or an unfavorable one, like last week out in the desert with all those swarming insects. 

            The way I try to persevere in all situations, good and bad, is through prayer.  I keep a prayer list, and many of your names are on it, and I do my best to pray that daily.  But prayer is more than that – for me in my prayers, I somehow find a way to connect with God and that connection with God offers me hope, so that whether the time is favorable or unfavorable loses its importance, because what becomes most important to me, when I am praying faithfully and regularly, is being grounded with God, with having a real relationship with Christ.  That’s what matters, that’s what gives me hope, ultimately.

            The focus in 2 Timothy on persevering through favorable or unfavorable moments in life is also true for this church, at this moment.  It is not a secret that we are in our annual stewardship campaign, in which all of us are asked to prayerfully consider our financial commitment to St. Andrew’s for next year.  For many of us, an annual stewardship campaign might count as one of those “unfavorable” moments for which we are called to persevere through.  I am guilty of feeling that way, at times.

            I said from this pulpit two weeks ago that I would use the next few sermons to unpack a bit about our stewardship this year and explain why this campaign is asking more from all of us.  And so, I want to take a few minutes to talk about why this year’s pledge goal is significantly higher than in years past.  The reason is because of feedback I and other leaders in the church have received from many of you about an overall desire to see current ministries grow and new ones develop.  Ministries take people to lead them, and in a church of this size, it is more common for ministries to be staff led rather than volunteer led.  Don’t misunderstand me, there are plenty of volunteer ministries in the church, and there will always be.  That said, your Vestry has called for three additional staff positions for 2020 so that current, and new ministries can grow: they are, in this order, bringing our Director of Music and Organist to a full-time position, hiring a youth minister, and acquiring additional needed support in the office.  

            Over the coming weeks, I am going to talk about these in reverse order, beginning today with support in the office.  Admittedly, a conversation about needed office support staff does not make for a riveting sermon, I get that.  But you all also need to know that while we have a full-time parish administrator, there is much she is not able to do because the work demand has grown substantially in the last few years.  Our parish treasurer is a volunteer and is currently spending 6-10 hours a week pro bono on church work, but it is not enough time to complete all that needs to be done, because he has a full-time job.  We need additional, paid office support.  Because this person will be dealing with confidential and private information like social security numbers, compensation amounts, insurance and HR needs, it’s not appropriate to designate this position as a parish volunteer opportunity. 

            Now I am the first to admit that this position is not glamorous in the way that a full-time Director of Music and Organist or a youth minister might be, but the Vestry, your Finance Committee, and I believe this staff support is critical to establishing a strong foundation to support our current ministries as they grow and new ones as the emerge.   In following weeks, I will speak more about the full-time Director of Music and Youth Minister roles.

            Whether the moment is favorable or unfavorable – the need is great.  I believe tt is a favorable time to be at St. Andrew’s.  I believe it is favorable to Ponder Anew, What the Almighty Can Do.  AMEN.

October 6, 2019

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Pentecost – Proper 22

Lamentations 1: 1-6; Lamentations 3:19-26; 2 Timothy 1: 1-14; Luke 17: 5-10

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

Let us pray:

Give ear, O heavens, and I will speak, and let the earth hear the words of my mouth. May my teaching drop as the rain, my speech distill as the dew, like gentle rain upon the tender grass, and like showers upon the herb. For I will proclaim the name of the LORD; ascribe greatness to our God! Deuteronomy 32: 1-3

In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  AMEN.

That prayer was from the book of Deuteronomy, and is attributed to Moses.  Rarely do I offer scripture back-to-back in a sermon, but will do so now, it is a verse we heard earlier in the service from the book of 2 Timothy, in which Paul says: “God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.”

            Two weeks ago, many of us who live in the Heights neighborhood noticed a dark column of smoke emerging from the Woodland Heights area.  Fire engines raced to the scene to discover that a historic Heights church, St. Mark’s Methodist, was tragically on fire.  While the fire was contained to their education building, the smoke damage affected a much larger area inside their church building.

               Because of the fire, several groups that regularly meet at St. Mark’s started reaching out to other congregations to see if they could hold their meetings elsewhere.  One of those groups, a Wednesday evening Alcoholics Anonymous group called St. Andrew’s, and asked if we had space for them.  We did, and they started meeting here last week. 

               I went to the very beginning of their first meeting here last week to welcome them – a group of over fifty people gathered in our parish hall.  The meeting began with a moment of silent reflection followed by a prayer, and during that moment of silence I heard someone whisper “God is here.”  After the prayer, I welcomed the group, and then left. 

               It struck me that for the few minutes I was in that room, how much it felt like church to me.  I guess that’s what happens when you get a group of drug addicts and alcoholics together talking about how God has saved them from the urge to drink or to use.   This church hosts meetings like that one five times a week.  And they are big groups. 

               I also realized that what we do here on a Sunday morning, is but one small part of what occurs in this building throughout the week.  Church happens here not just on Sunday mornings, but Monday – Friday with our other congregation – the one we call St. Andrew’s Episcopal School.  I am aware all the time when I observe how carefully and lovingly St. Andrew’s School teachers carefully minister to our learners, that there, too, church is going on. 

               Whether it is a group of men or women who faithfully meet weekly for Bible Study, a Sunday morning congregation, children and adults rehearsing at choir practice, volunteers distributing food to Meals on Wheels recipients, or a group of recovering addicts sharing their experience, strength, and hope with each other – all of it, is church. 

               So much happens here in this building, it is so inspiring to me – what happens here.  As the Apostle Paul says “I am not ashamed of the Gospel” in today’s reading from 2 Timothy, neither am I ashamed to talk with you all in the weeks ahead about what this church is doing, and what its needs are.  Starting next Sunday, St. Andrew’s will do what many other churches do in the Fall, and we will have our annual stewardship campaign, which means we will be asking everyone to make a financial pledge to the church for next year. 

               The theme of the campaign is  “Ponder Anew, what the Almighty Can Do,” which is a verse from hymn 390 in our Hymnal entitled “Praise to the Lord.”  This year’s campaign pledge goal is $625,000, a twenty percent increase over last year.  That goal is ambitious.  It is what former Bishop Claude Payne would call a “BHAG” a Big Hairy Audacious Goal.  Your Vestry and your Finance Committee believe it is an achievable, and sustainable goal.

               Why the 20% increase?  I will be sharing more about that in a series of upcoming sermons that explain our stewardship goals in much greater detail.  During the Stewardship season in Faith Matters, this is what we are talking about for the next five weeks.  I hope you come to those classes so you can learn about what has brought St. Andrew’s to this moment.  If you are on our church mailing list, will also receive one of these envelopes in your mailbox.  The temptation, now that you know what it looks like, will be to not open it!  Please open it, read it, pray about what your contribution will be to St. Andrew’s for 2020.

               Every year St. Andrew’s revenue line starts at zero dollars.  Our ministries and staff, are funded from all of our pledges.  The Vestry has approved a budget for next year that is ambitious, but it is a budget that is based upon the feedback of many of you and reflects much of what you all have been asking from this church for the last two years. 

               Today I will close with these words from 2 Timothy today, God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.  I am not ashamed – I am excited – to “Ponder Anew, what the Almighty Can Do.”  AMEN.

September 29, 2019

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Proper 21

Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15, 1 Timothy 6:6-19, Luke 16:19-31

The Rev. Bradley Varnell

Futures are very important. The futures we imagine shape how we live our day to day lives. As much as we idolize ‘living in the moment,’ the reality is that we have to have some conception of what’s to come in order to live well now. Right - if my future holds running the Houston marathon, that’s got to impact the choices I make today: will I go for a run, or will I finish binge watching Project Runway? Futures shape our present day lives, but they also inspire the hope that give us the energy, the drive to push on in our day to day lives. When we lose sight of our future, when the future is no longer a possible for whatever reason, we lose our hope, and when we lose our hope, we lose the thing that keeps us pressing onward.

We have a much more high-stakes example of the importance of the futures we imagine in our first lesson from Jeremiah today. Jeremiah is imprisoned by the king of Judah in Jerusalem, as the city is under siege by the armies of Babylon. It is only a matter of time before the army of an empire overruns the small, Jewish kingdom of Judah. In the midst of all this, in the midst of invasion, with threat of displacement and destruction, of life as he knows it being completely turned upside down hanging over him Jeremiah is faced with a choice: the Word of God comes to him and announces that his cousin will be coming to offer him a field in his home village, Anathoth. Hanamel, Jeremiah’s cousin, is offering the field under the right of redemption, an ancient Jewish practice that required a person selling a piece of land, to first offer it to their next of kin. It was a practice designed to keep ancestral lands within the clan. It preserved a family’s heritage and inheritance.

But it’s not just Hanamel making an offer, God is in the midst of all this. In the midst of destruction God invites Jeremiah to do something that to onlookers can only appear as absolute stupidity, or perhaps a result of the madness and trauma that war and invasion bring. This offer makes no sense given what’s happening. Just imagine - armies are invading, you are locked up in the king’s palace, and you’re being sold a field in your hometown. It would be like being offered a condo in downtown Damascus today. There is nothing about Jeremiah’s situation that should lead him to buy the field in Anathoth, except for God.

God invites Jeremiah to make this purchase not because it’s a good real estate deal, but because it is a sign of hope to Jeremiah and to the Jewish people that despite how bad things look, despite the present moment, God is still God. To paraphrase one of the commentaries I read this week, God invites Jeremiah to make a down payment on the future. God invites Jeremiah to live in light of what will be. Israel is falling down around him, but Jeremiah invests in the future life that God will give to Israel. And God does give Israel a future. Babylon overruns Israel. It exiles thousands and thousands. It destroys the Jerusalem temple. But eventually, the Israelites return, they rebuild their temple, and slowly, but surely, they reclaim the life they knew in their land.

The good news is that the God of Jeremiah is our God too. Jeremiah reminds us that the God we worship is a God who has a vision for the future and so is a God who invites us to hope. He’s a God who time and time again makes a way where there appeared to be no way. He’s a God who isn’t limited by our present. Jeremiah offered hope to his people, and he offers hope to us. We may not have the armies of Babylon to worry about, but we have climate change, current and potential wars, political turmoil, lack of trust in political institutions, the global refugee crisis, the resurgence of white nationalism and racism. Mortgages and rents, the economy, the opioid crisis, student debt. We have plenty of things in our individual lives and our communal life today that can make the future look bleak. But God invites us to hope, just as he invited Jeremiah to hope.

Hoping isn’t just a matter of thinking hopeful thoughts, though. It’s about living in light of what we hope. Jeremiah didn’t just think that God would restore Israel. He acted in light of his hope by buying the field in Anathoth. Christians through the years have rightly been criticized for hoping so much in the future that we forget about the present. Ignoring suffering and injustice and hurt all around us. That’s not being hopeful. That’s being selfish. As Christians, we’re invited to live in light of our hope in God’s future where there is no more pain or suffering, a future where there is justice and peace, a future where broken relationships are mended, a future where God’s love is known and felt by all, where God’s life flows through our lives, where everyone is included. A future where God makes everything right. This means we’re invited to work to make things right today, in our lives and in our world. When we work for justice, for healing, for redemption, for the good, we’re living in light of God’s future. We’re bringing God’s future to bear on our present. This doesn’t require dramatic acts! Jeremiah lived into God’s future by buying some land, by completing a real estate transaction. A kind word, an offer of forgiveness, choosing to laugh when you just want to cry, giving out a helping hands bag, these and so much more are little ways we live in light of God’s future, these are ways we live into the hope we have in God. These are ways we share hope with others.

Hope for those of us who worship the God of Jeremiah isn’t saying ‘it’s going to be ok.’ Hope for those of us who worship the God of Jeremiah is saying ‘things aren’t ok, things suck, but God is God, and God has a future for us.’ One of the reasons we come together every week, is to remember this. Week after week we come together, and we hear stories of how God has, time and time again, come to the rescue of his people. Restoring them, liberating them, finding them. God invites us to live into hope for a future where all is restored, where all are liberated, where all are found.

Amen.

September 15, 2019

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Proper 19   

Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28; Psalm 14; 1 Timothy 1: 12-17; Luke 15: 1-10

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

 

In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  AMEN

Earlier this week, I lost my wallet.  It was an unsettling feeling as anyone who has ever lost a wallet understands.  It was while driving one of my kids to football practice when I realized where I might have placed it.  I called my wife, explained to her that I had lost my wallet, and then said, and - this is going to sound weird – asked her “could you check in the garbage can?” 

Earlier in the day, I had unloaded some garbage from my car, placed it into our garbage can.  When I am preoccupied in thought and not always paying attention, I will do things like, throw my wallet into the garbage along with the hamburger wrapper from Whataburger or whatever else ends up in my car.  Thank God she checked, and she successfully found my lost wallet.  This is an important insight into our marriage: I am good at misplacing things; my wife is much better at finding them. 

To rejoice over something that we have found, we must first experience losing it.  To lose something is rarely pleasant for us, and yet loss is a necessary part of our existence.  To live means that we will lose things – some things superficial, like a wallet.  We will lose things very close to us – parents, animal companions, children, relationships, dreams. 

Today we hear two stories about about lost things – a lost sheep and a lost coin – which invite us to consider the strange paradox that sometimes the way God gives us things is by us losing them.  I will give you an example.

Twelve years ago, I sat with my mother during the final days of her life which she spent at the Houston Hospice.  During that time, I told her everything I needed to tell her.  I told her I loved her, I thanked her for being such a wonderful, loving mother to me, for supporting me through really difficult times.  When she died a day or two later, I did not feel as if there was any unfinished business between us. 

As many of us know, grieving the loss of someone is very hard work.  For me, it was draining physically, emotionally, and spiritually.  Losing something so close to us is painful.

I know that Jesus understood loss, and the pain it created in the human heart.  Jesus lost one of his close friends John the Baptist.  He wept at the grave of another close friend, Lazarus. 

But I also think that Jesus understood loss as a pathway that can draw us closer to God.  I believe that is why he tells these stories of a lost coin and a lost sheep so that we might understand that losing things creates a space for us to receive God in a powerful way.  When the woman loses a coin, she lights a lamp and searches all over the house until the coin is found.  When the shepherd loses one sheep, he leaves the group to find the one that was lost.  These stories point to the reckless abandon which God demonstrates upon finding what was once lost.

I believe God demonstrated such reckless abandon to find me.  Prior to losing my mother, I struggled to believe, or to trust in heaven, and in life after death.  Years in seminary, which I thought would offer qualitative proof that resurrection was real, failed to do so.  I wanted proof, I wanted answers, and nowhere I looked could I find either.  Early in my priesthood, I officiated at many funerals where I wondered if I believed the words I was saying about Christ raising the dead to life.  I’m not proud of that, but it is the truth. 

That struggle for certainty and proof finally ended when I lost my mother.  I can’t explain what happened exactly, except to say that I no longer needed proof that there was life after death, I know longer needed answers to my questions.  In losing my mother, God with reckless abandon, found me, and I experienced, perhaps for the first time in my life, true peace and serenity.  Or to put in another way, I received a peace in losing my mother, a trust, that she was in Jesus’ hands, and that she would be okay.

For whatever reason, before her death, I struggled to believe this.  I wanted desperately to believe in heaven and life after death, to be like other Christians I knew who seemed to have no problem believing these things. When my mother died, so also died my need for proof, my need for evidence.  When the student is ready, the teacher appears.  I wasn’t ready before she died, but somehow, I was after.  I learned at her funeral (where I did believe the words of the liturgy the priest said, and believe them still), that sometimes we have to lose something close to us to find God. 

 As Jesus says elsewhere in another Gospel “those who want to save their life will lose it, those who lose their life for my sake will save it.” 

Only in Jesus is loss really a gain for everlasting life.  What are you willing to lose for the sake of Christ’s sake and yours?  AMEN.   

September 8, 2019

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Proper 18
Jeremiah 18:1-11, Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17, Philemon 1-21, Luke 14:25-33

The Rev. Bradley Varnell, Curate

Jesus’ message today is stark. This large crowd of women and men and children are following him to Jerusalem, and he stops them, turns to them, confronts them head on and he lays out his terms: to follow him you’ve got to hate your family, hate your own life, and pick up the cross. Not exactly the most uplifting pitch you’ve ever heard. Jesus’ words today challenge us to take stock, to make a decision, to consider whether or not we are willing to pay the price of following him. To follow Jesus will cost us. But hidden under Jesus’ startling words is the good news, the great news that the cost is a small price to pay for what we receive in turn.

Jesus invites those in the crowd to be his disciples. To go where he goes. But that means they will have to carry the cross, like Jesus must carry the cross. To follow Jesus is to be willing to face death in some way. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a martyr under Nazi Germany, famously wrote “when Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” For some Christians in the past and present, like Bonhoeffer, following Jesus has meant a willingness to face literal death. But for all Christians, following Christ means a willingness to die to those things that would keep us from Christ and from living as citizens of God’s Kingdom. Followers of Christ have to die to selfishness, to bitterness, to greed, to sin. Followers of Christ must make loyalty to Christ more important than any other loyalty.

This is quite the demand. But that’s part of the very nature of discipleship. Discipleship was a deep, intimate, trusting relationship between a master and the disciple. In ancient Israel for a teacher to have disciples wasn’t a strange thing at all, it was the norm, it was how knowledge and insight and wisdom and practice were all passed on. Disciples devoted themselves to spending time with the master, to learning how to think and act like him, to building a relationship with him. Being a disciple wasn’t just about gaining head-knowledge, it was about being formed and shaped into a certain kind of person. It was learning to be like someone. Disciples of a master didn’t just attend classes a few times a week, they lived and breathed with the master. Their lives and the lives of the master became intertwined. Where he went, they went.

This, of course, had a cost. People had to leave their homes and families, they had to order their life around this other person. They couldn’t be a disciple on their terms. They had to make their teacher, their master the priority.

So Jesus is asking those in the crowd to make him the priority in their lives. More important than family. Even more important than their own lives. Now, he’s engaging in a bit of prophetic hyperbole to get his point across. Think of a wedding ceremony – the couple promises to forsake all others. The promise isn’t about abandoning every relationship other than the one with their spouse, the promise is that of all the relationships a person has, this new relationship, this marital relationship takes precedence. Jesus says hate your family, hate your life but his point isn’t that we should harbor some kind of disdain for others or ourselves, rather his point is that he should be our priority, he should be the center of our lives, the one we love most.

But why? Why make Jesus the center? Why follow him where he goes? Why make him our teacher and master? Because Christ has fully and completely animated by the love of God. Christ’s life is all about the love of God and sharing God’s love for others. To follow Christ, to be his disciple is to devote ourselves to becoming people who are more and more animated by God’s love, it is to become people who, like Christ, can share God’s love with others. Discipleship is about learning to walk in the way of God’s love.

At Duke we often sang a song during communion called “We are One in the Spirit,” the chorus goes “and they’ll know we are Christians by our love.” The mark of Christians is that we love like Christ loves – but that’s easier said, or sung, than done. The hard work of devoting ourselves to discipleship, to following Christ, is how we learn to love like Christ loves.

Jesus asks us to make him the center of our life, to put him and our relationship with him first before our families and ourselves, not so we can forget our families or forget ourselves. It’s so we can learn to love our families and love ourselves better, so that we can learn to love our families and ourselves like Christ loves them and us. We carry our crosses and follow Jesus so that all those things that stop us from loving as Christ loves can be crucified, so that we can learn how to love as recklessly, as freely, as abundantly, as extravagantly as he loves us. Can you imagine what our lives, our families, our parishes would look like if we could love like Christ loves? It would change our world.

But we can only love as Christ loves us if we know Christ. And we can only come to know Christ by spending time with him. This is one thing I’ve been thinking a lot about in the last few months. I spent a lot of time studying religion and theology – in undergrad and then at seminary – and I feel like I know a lot of facts about Jesus, but I think I could know Jesus – the living Jesus, the resurrected Jesus – better. What I’m realizing in my own spiritual life is that I can’t just think about Jesus or know facts about Jesus. I’ve got to know the living Christ. Facts about Jesus don’t love me, don’t love us, but Jesus does.

We’re all busy though. We’re all running in what seems to be hundreds of different directions, with many commitments vying for our time and it seems downright selfish of Jesus to ask for more. So many of us are strapped for “more” to offer. We’re running on empty. There’s barely enough time to spend with family and friends – and now we’ve got to fit Jesus in? So, what do we do? How do we set off to follow Jesus, to go where he goes? Well, we start small. We do what we can. 

We start by inviting Jesus into our lives – not just on Sunday. Jesus can’t be the center of our life if Jesus isn’t involved in our lives. But it’s our lives he wants to be the center of – our lives in all their busyness and messiness. I’ve often been trapped by the idea that I have to be “holier” or “more Christian” for God to really be invested or involved in me – but it’s just not true! God isn’t waiting for us to get somewhere for him to be present with us. He wants to meet us right now, wherever we are.

So we invite Jesus into our lives, this requires, though, that we talk to him – we pray to him. These don’t have to be elaborate prayers found in the prayer book, though they can be. Prayer can be simple notes to God that we send off. We can pray at meals, as we begin our day, as we go into school or a meeting, as we hang out with friends – simply asking Christ to be with us, to help us love like he loves in these settings and with these people. These prayers can happen in the little spare moments we already have.

Part of inviting Christ into our life is making Scripture a part of our life. Scripture is the word of God, that means God speaks through its pages – by sitting with Scripture we can begin to hear God better, as God uses the words that have shaped Jews and Christians for thousands of years to shape us.  Spending time with Scripture is super hard for me, personally, but I’ve found the daily office in the prayer book to be really helpful in giving me a guide for reading the Bible. A Psalm a day is also a great way to begin a Bible reading discipline, but there are many other ways to spend time with Scripture: there are apps, and Bible reading guides. Bible studies here at church. Forward Day by Day is another wonderful print and electronic resource that provides a small verse and brief reflection for each day of the week. Scripture is a gift, and what matters most is finding what works for you in exploring it.

Prayer and Scripture are small ways we can begin inviting Jesus into our life. These are little steps we can take to spend more time with the one who will teach us how to be more like him, how to love ourselves and others like he loves. These are ways we can begin building our relationship with Christ. This will take time, but good relationships always do. Like any relationship, there will be ups and downs, starts and stops, seasons where it is easier, and seasons where it just seems impossible. But like the best relationships, sticking it out is worth it.

Amen.


September 1, 2019

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Proper 17  

Jeremiah 2:4-13; Psalm 81: 1, 10-16; Hebrews 13: 1-8, 15-16, Luke 14: 1, 7-14

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

 

In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  AMEN

            Did you catch it?  Did you notice in the Gospel that we did not get the whole story from Luke’s Gospel today?  We started with v.1 of chapter 14, then we skipped over verses 2-6, to begin once again at verse 7, continuing to v 14. Why?  I don’t know.  St. Andrew’s doesn’t choose our Sunday readings, but rather we follow something called a “lectionary” which is a weekly cycle of readings that Episcopal churches follow. 

            I’m always suspect when I see an omission like this, and I wonder if you are too.  Good news is that there are Bibles in your pews, there are Bible apps you can download on your phone, so that you all have a means to read the omitted verses.  And I will in a moment, because it’s those omitted verses (2-6) that I want to talk about today.  Look up Luke in your pew Bible or just listen as I read these verses:

 

“On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the pharisees to eat a meal on the sabbath, they were watching him closely.  [we already heard that, here begins v. 2]  Just then, in front of him there was a man who had dropsy.  And Jesus asked the lawyers and Pharisees, ‘Is it lawful to cure people on the sabbath or not?’ But they were silent, so Jesus took him and said to them, ‘if one of you has a child or an ox that has fallen into a well, will you not immediately pull it out on a sabbath day?’  And they could not reply to this.” 

            First of all, a word about dropsy, because I had no idea what it was, or is.  Dropsy is akin to edema, a swelling in the body which is connected to heart failure, or at least that’s what Wikipedia tells me.  Perhaps the person brought before Jesus was having congestive heart failure.  It was a sabbath day, meaning no work was to be done, to honor the commandment given by God to not work on the Sabbath.  Jesus challenged this religious law and asked the lawyers and pharisees if it was lawful to heal on a sabbath day, or not.  He made the point very personal for them, saying if it was your own child who had fallen into a well, would you not immediately pull them out, even if that act was considered “work” on a sabbath day? 

            We don’t know if Jesus healed this man with the severe swelling or not.  The Gospel does not tell us.  But I would not be surprised if he did, given that there are about thirteen other occasions in the four Gospels where Jesus breaks the rule, healing people on a sabbath day, and really infuriating people like the Pharisees in the process.

            What does this strange story, a story omitted from today’s Gospel mean for us today?  Does it matter?   It matters to me, and this is why.  I believe in healing.  I believe that Jesus heals us no matter what day of the week it is.  I am not saying that if I were diagnosed with cancer tomorrow that I believe I could simply ask Jesus to heal me and the tumor will miraculously disappear.  That’s a cure.  And while a cure is of course desirable, I don’t think it is always in our best interest.    

            Healing is different.  Healing doesn’t mean getting rid of dropsy or cancer, it means that we are given the strength, through Christ, to meet such adversity with courage.  Healing, at least to me, is not something I pray for only when I am sick or injured.  I try to pray for healing daily when I am well, when everything seems to be going fine.  Because I know that there will come a day when my body will fail me, when I will face something which cannot be cured.  And in that moment, I hope to have the serenity and peace which comes only from God.  I hope that I will have the spiritual depth to know that even if what I have is incurable, it won’t matter, because God has already healed me.

            Today we baptize a newborn child into the kingdom of God.  In baptism, one is marked permanently as Christ’s own forever.  Baptism it is not a guarantee against illness or adversity, as many baptized already know.  Baptism instead recognizes the promise God makes to us.  Part of that promise, I believe, is that Christ will heal you, whether or not you arecured.

Did you catch it?  Did you miss seeing that God is healing you, even as your body ages and weakens?  It’s easy to miss, kind of like the Gospel reading we skipped over today.  And yet, God’s healing is available to all of us, if we just are willing to slow down, and not skip past it.  AMEN.

August 25, 2019

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Proper 16     

Jeremiah 1:4-10; Psalm 71: 1-6; Hebrews 12: 18-29, Luke 13:10-17

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  AMEN

            “Therefore since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us give thanks, by which we offer to God an acceptable worship with reverence and awe; for indeed our God is a consuming fire.”  Those words from the letter to the Hebrews travel a long distance to meet us here in church this morning. 

            Every Christian who is humble before God receives a kingdom which cannot be shaken, so the author of Hebrews writes.  What an astounding claim.  I wonder how many of you who consider yourselves Christian would feel today that you are the inheritor of a kingdom which knows no limits.

            When my mother died twelve years ago, she left behind for my siblings and I some land out in the hill country.  It is far cry from a “kingdom which cannot be shaken,” but it is beautiful.  But with the bequest of that land comes a lot of responsibility that I don’t really want. 

            So my siblings and I have put it on the market to sell.  Real estate tends to move slowly in the country, and we will see if anyone is interested in purchasing it.  I hope so. 

            The things which we inherit, be they material possessions, land, or otherwise, can become problematic for us.  We might not be interested in having such things.  The things we inherit might add more complication to our lives which are already complicated enough.

            But it is not so with the kingdom of God. Whether we feel we are worthy or not, whether we feel we deserve it or not, all Christians are inheritors of this kingdom. 

            And like the land which I inherited, the kingdom of God comes with responsibility, but not the kind of responsibility one must have to take care of earthly things.  The responsibility as an inheritor of the kingdom of God is simple: it is that we have faith, and that we live with humility.

            In the midst of a world that is changing so fast, in a world many of us might not understand now, God offers us what God has always offered since the beginning of time – an unchanging, abiding, presence – a kingdom that cannot be shaken.

            The kingdom of God is not a place or a thing – it is the presence of God that is living and active in our lives.  Neither is the kingdom of God something only available to deceased faithful Christians, a “sweet bye and bye” a “Heavenly reward” for those who live faithfully.  The kingdom of God is the real, tangible, visceral presence of Jesus Christ in our lives that establishes for us an unshakable foundation.

            The unshakeable kingdom reveals itself in the face of a woman or man that in spite of the challenges they face day in and day out, their face shows not pain, not fatigue, not sorrow.  Their face shows joy and gratitude.  Whenever I meet a person demonstrating authentic gratitude, I know I am near to this unshakable kingdom. 

            As inheritors of this kingdom, we are called to step out in faith, to follow God with humility, trusting God as God leads us into new and uncomfortable places.  There is no kingdom greater than the unshakeable one, no presence stronger than the love of Christ, which redeems everything, and covers all wounds, all sin, all evil. 

            That is the power of God which is freely given to us, which we inherit.  The power of Christ’s love is stronger than any political party, any agenda, or any army or military force.  It is Christ’s love which is unshakeable, freely given to all who humble themselves to receive it. 

It is the greatest inheritance.  And it is already given to you, if you will just receive it.  AMEN.

August 18, 2019

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Proper 15

Isaiah 5:1-7, Psalm 80:1-2, 8-18, Hebrews 11:29-12:2, Luke 12:49-56

The Rev. Bradley Varnell


Merciful God – grant that only your word would be proclaimed, and only your word heard. Amen.

During my first year at Duke Divinity, where I went to seminary, there was a protest organized by the Black Seminarians Union against the Dean and Administration of the Divinity School to raise awareness of the institutionalized racism of the school, it’s anti-blackness, it’s lack of commitment to the needs of students of color and to call attention to the need for change. It was going to take place outside of the chapel during the closing worship service of the school year. A friend invited me to attend. It was an opportunity to show the administration how many students recognized the problems at the divinity school and wanted something done about them. It was also an opportunity for white students to come alongside students of color and physically show our support for them, it was a chance for those of us to take a stand with people who were suffering, who were fed up, to stand with people who wanted a change. 

I declined. I was happy for other people to do what they needed to do; I just didn’t want to join.

I had plenty of reasons why I didn’t go – I wasn’t on campus that day, I didn’t know if I thought this was the best method of addressing concerns, it seemed mean to the dean who really was trying her best. The real reason, though, was that the idea of standing out there protesting in front of the chapel, as guests, and faculty, and fellow students walked by sounded stressful.

It wasn’t that I didn’t support the issues they were raising awareness about, I just didn’t want to support them in that way. I’m not, by nature, a “protester,” I’m not by nature someone who wants to hold up a sign, and chant, or be a part of a crowd like that. Stuff like that makes me uncomfortable. Joining the protest would have meant giving up my peace and I just wasn’t interested in that. And I want to be clear – it wasn’t that I risked arrest, or expulsion, or any sort of repercussion really. It wasn’t that there was a danger to me being there. It just would have been outside of my comfort-zone.

So, I didn’t go. I didn’t stand with the protesters.

Afterwards there was some tension on campus, as you can imagine, between those who attended the protest and those who hadn’t. I was annoyed that there was any sort of problem. I didn’t know why couldn’t people just accept that protesting isn’t for everyone. A friend of mine, who I was in a few classes with, had been at the protest. She’s a woman of color, wonderful, brilliant. She was one of the most vocal advocates for African American and Queer students at Duke. It was relayed to me through the grapevine that on the day of the protest, outside the chapel, she asked where I was and was told that I wasn’t there. And y’all that got me. God convicted me, like God often does. I was her friend, I knew her story, I knew all the crap she had to deal with as a woman of color and LGBTQ person at Duke and I didn’t show up. I wasn’t there. In one swift moment this protest, this amorphous, abstract protest became concrete. I had chosen to be comfortable, instead of showing up and supporting a friend. I chose my peace at the expense of a friend, instead of choosing my friend at the expense of my peace.

Pause

So much of what we call peace in our lives is like this - an attempt to avoid those things that make us uncomfortable, so we avoid saying or doing those things that might disturb our spiritual, emotional, physical, economic equilibrium, and we call that peace. In this peace, though, we can forget about the pain and suffering of others. That’s what happened to me, I forgot that real people at Duke, people I knew and loved, were suffering and asked for support.

But this also cuts the other way – we can so value other people’s comfort that we avoid our own pain and suffering. We don’t bring up how another’s words or actions hurt us or we don't talk about the ways our needs aren’t being met. Our goal becomes keeping the peace at our expense.

All of this is normal. We live in a world that is hurting, that is broken, that is suffering. Our lives are affected by that, we have to find a way to deal with it. We can’t spend every hour glued to the news absorbing the tragedies in around us. And we can’t spend every hour ruminating on our own hurt. We have to live at some point. In talking about the peace we often pursue my point isn’t how bad we are that we do this, it’s that whether we’re focused on our own peace or another’s the basic issue remains the same: the comfort of peace rests on the avoidance of someone’s pain and suffering, on someone’s discomfort. And our own peace or another’s doesn’t actually heal the hurt around us.

I think this is what our Gospel is all about today: the way in which the peace we seek in our world, the peace we try and secure for ourselves or others, is disrupted by Christ, who offers us something far better, but far more challenging.  When I hear Jesus say that he has not come to bring peace, this is the peace I think of. The peace that ignores and avoids, peace that doesn’t offer healing. Jesus doesn’t have any of that. Today we hear that all Jesus has, all Jesus brings with him is fire.

Now this sounds pretty bad. Fire, in almost any religion but especially Christianity, often conjures up images of hellfire and brimstone. It’s true that in scripture “fire” serves as a sort of shorthand for judgement or punishment. But “fire” in scripture, can also serve as a shorthand for revelation and exposure. Fire in a lamp casts light in dark places exposing what’s hidden, fire in a refiner’s furnace brings impurities to the surface showing what’s precious and what’s not. Jesus comes bringing this kind of fire – not fire of judgement or punishment, but fire that shines light in our world, that exposes those things we want to keep hidden – like our pain and suffering and the pain and suffering of others.

Where we want to avoid the places of discomfort, Jesus seeks them out. Where our attempts at peace ignore, Jesus’ ministry acknowledges. Jesus has come into our world bringing the fire of God’s love. And God’s love exposes everything in our world that is hurting, that is suffering, that isn’t as it should be. And God’s love heals, it liberates, it renews.

Pause

Jesus invites us to experience the fire of God’s love. To experience the power of the love of God to heal and transform the pain and suffering in our own lives. But we can’t embrace the love of God and then hope for a peaceful, tranquil life afterwards. When we are touched by God’s love we are called to pay it forward, to follow Jesus into uncomfortable spots, to spread God’s love to the places of pain and suffering in the lives of others. This will make our lives hard. Jesus talks about bringing division today not because he like stirring up drama for the sake of drama – but because living out of the love of God, sharing the love of God in a world that’s dedicated to keeping peace at the expense of acknowledging pain and suffering will require we take a stand, maybe even against our own families if our families would rather keep the peace instead of experiencing healing and transformation.

The greatest example of the cost of sharing God’s love is Jesus’. Jesus comes bringing the love of God to our world and he’s killed, killed by those who prioritized their own peace, who were threatened by the way Jesus made the pain and suffering around him unavoidable. But the pain and suffering of the cross didn’t stop the love of God. The love of God overcame death, transfiguring the tragedy of Good Friday into the joy of Easter Sunday.

The same love that brought Jesus back from the dead is with us as we go out into the world. As we go about our lives this week, I hope we’ll all keep this Gospel in mind. As followers of Christ we aren’t promised peace, instead we’re invited to share the love of God with others. As we try and share God’s love we’ll be met with opposition sometimes, and we’ll encounter hard moments. It’s ok to be scared or nervous. It’s ok to fumble. There will be times when we won’t take a stand, when our nerve will fail us; times when we seek our own peace at the expense of sharing God’s love. That’s ok too – there’s always grace, there’s always forgiveness. And in our world, there’s always another opportunity to share God’s love.  The challenge isn’t to be perfect, it’s to be ok with being uncomfortable, because Jesus didn’t come to bring us comfort. Jesus came to bring us God’s love. Amen.

July 28, 2019

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Proper 12     

Hosea 1: 2-10; Psalm 85; Colossians 2:6-19, Luke 11:1-13

The Rev. James M.L. Grace 

In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  AMEN

            There are so many reasons not to embrace the Christian faith: the hypocrisy of Christians, the narrow mindedness of denominations, clergy sexual abuse scandals, clergy who drive Lamborghinis, and the list just goes on and on.  So many reasons.  Here’s one more to add to the list: prayers that seem to go unanswered.  That’s the ace in the hole for every atheist’s denouncement of Christianity – which is that the God we purport to worship is asleep on the job, otherwise our prayers for healing and peace in the world would be answered.  Any quick glance at the newspaper or of the news would seem to provide evidence to the contrary.

Epidemics of famine, disease, pollution, war – they all are all seemingly valid arguments for every atheist who wishes to proclaim that if God isn’t dead, God at least is either passed out, unaware, detached, or completely uninterested. 

            Why do we pray?  Are we asking God to do something for us?  Are we asking God to alter physical properties of the world so that we might be protected, even if that means other people suffer?  If a hurricane forms in the Gulf of Mexico, and we pray that Houston not be in its path, then where do we expect it to go?

If you remember nothing else from this sermon (and you probably won’t) remember this: prayer is not about changing God’s mind.  Prayer is not about asking God for a promotion, or to win the lottery, or to magically change your spouse or significant other into someone who is less annoying.  Prayer isn’t magic. 

            Neither is prayer is not an attempt to micro-manage God into following our agenda.  It is not a process where if we just pray enough we will some how change God’s mind about something, and maybe enlist God onto “our side”  - that we will manipulate God into doing our will.  That’s not prayer, though I thought it was, for a long time.

Prayer is something else entirely.  Prayer is a conscious surrender of our will to God, that God would take it, redeem it, transform it, and that somehow through a miracle, we would ask not that our will be done, but God’s will be done.  Someone much smarter than I, a Danish philosopher named Soren Kierkagaard, once said that “prayer does not change God, it changes the person who prays.” 

            Are you being changed by your prayers?

            Today in the Gospel reading from Luke, we observe Jesus teaching his disciples how to pray, and he does so in a very simple way, sharing a prayer with them that we call today “The Lord’s Prayer.”  He then follows the prayer with a short anecdote about being persistent in prayer.

For a long time the meaning I took away from the story of the friend who comes and knocks at the door asking for bread in the middle of the night was this: if at first you don’t succeed, try and try again.  If I offer a prayer to God, and it seems to go unanswered, that just means I need to pray more persistently.  I need to try harder.  My prayer wasn’t good enough.  I need to go back to the door, knock harder on it, even bang on it if I have to.  If that doesn’t work, I should start trying to kick it, or even try breaking and entering if need be.  If God won’t answer the prayer, I’ll just have to answer it myself.

            Much of my spiritual life has been ruled with this kind of thinking, that if I knock and the door isn’t opened, I have to find a way to open it myself.  In doing this for a long time, I was blind to the fact that I was leaving God out of the equation.  If I could answer the prayer myself, I had no need for God.  You are correct if your assumption is that this never worked out well for me.

I see the story of the persistent, middle of the night, friend knocking on the door quite differently now. It’s no longer a story about trying harder with more persistence, about forcing my will upon God.  It’s rather a story about praying without ceasing.  Prayer without stopping.  It’s about an ongoing prayer life that deepens over time, not because we’re trying harder at it, not because we’re forcing it; but because we are voluntarily surrendering our lives over to God and we are feeling the peace which comes as an inevitable result of that decision.

We pray in a persistent way not to try to change God’s mind, but to allow the opportunity for God to change ours.  I promise you that if you choose to pray in an ongoing, persistent way, if you try to imagine how your life will be improved one, two three years from now, I guarantee you that you will sell yourself short every time.  You will be amazed at what God does in your life not because you did anything to earn it, but because you showed up to the door every day to knock on it – not that it would be opened, but that your soul would be.

            That’s the power of prayer, for me.  What is its power for you?  AMEN.